I just finished my final business trip of the year...with the SOA Consortium! The SOA Consortium has grown from 11 members to 81 members this year. Richard Soley, the Executive Director of the SOA Consortium, shared that the Consortium has the fastest first year growth on any user group he has been involved with in 18 years of user community experience!!! IBM was one of the founding sponsors of the SOA Consortium. As a vendor neutral organization, the Consortium is an SOA advocacy group comprised of end users, service providers, and technology vendors, committed to helping the Global 1000, major government agencies and mid-market businesses successfully adopt SOA by 2010. This is not about Standards. This is about the evangelism of SOA in the marketplace and ensuring that companies the right level of help to be successful. This year the SOA Consortium has achieved a number of successes: 1. Conducted CIO Executive Summits in New York, San Francisco, Brussels and Jacksonville, and produced a whitepaper and webcast with the findings from the New York and San Francisco Summits. 2. Collected and published a set of over 20 customer case studies submitted by members that have been widely circulated showing the business value of moving to SOA 3. Recruited client members from companies and the US Government, including Wells Fargo, Kohl's, Avis Budget and the US Army, in addition to having analyst members such as Hurwitz and Associates 4. Produced webcasts and podcasts on the topics of 'Executive Insights on SOA Adoption', 'SOA Governance', 'SOA/BPM Relationship', 'Enterprise Architecture of the Future', and 'CIO SOA Concerns' 5. SOA Consortium moderated and staffed 4 panels at key Gartner events as well as having booths in the Gartner showcase areas, and have been invited to even more Gartner events in 2008, due to 2007 success 6. SOA Consortium produced over 10 well received and often blogged deliverables and press releases, all of which list IBM as a founding sponsor IBM has had a significant influence on the organization as one of the four founding sponsors with actions such as co-leading and driving one of the three Consortium sub-groups (Executive Suite SOA), which produced the highly regarded and downloaded set of customer SOA case studies Here are the podcasts....! Take a listen! Live from the SOA Consortium - Sandy Carter of IBM Live from the SOA Consortium - CIO SOA Concerns [Read More]

Hey Gang! I am here in Asia Pacific. I have been to Japan, Korea and am now in China. I love Asia -- the people, the food, the culture! One thing that I learned in Asia many moons ago, was the game. Gaming is very big here. It is the way people play, relax and learn. To that end, we announced here in Asia the introduction of learning SOA and BPM through serious gaming. 12 Universities here are accepting the challenge of being bold enough to test this out! The universities are: Beijing Institute of Technology (China) BUAA (China) Chuo University (Japan) Harbin Institute of Technology (China) Keio University (Japan) Peking Unversity (China) Singapore Management University (Singapore) Sun Yat-sen University (China) Tongji University (China) Tsukuba University (Japan) Waseda University (Japan) Wuhan Unversity (China) Why Serious Gaming? Well now is the generation of Xbox. Who is Generation X-box? (or Digital Natives if you dont want to use Xbox). According to the Entertainment Software Association, in 2007 the average game player is 33 years old. 47% of all gamers fall in the 18-49 age range. 24% are over 50. The average age of MBA students varies by school, but generally late 20's for full time program, late 30's for exec. mba here are already more Gen X & Gen Ys, the "digitial natives" than there are baby boomers! We at IBM are trying to use games with a curriculum to help students learn and have fun! Our mandate -- have fun and • aggressively ignore any hint of formal instruction • lean heavily on trial-and-error (afer all, failure is nearly free, you just push “play again”) • includeslots of learning from peers but virtually none from authority figures • is consumed in very small bits, exactly when the learner wants, which is usually just before the skill is needed • allow for people to take risks in a safe environment • allow for players to achieve a skill or talent which is not only meaningful but perceived as having value So we announced Innov8 at IMPACT 2007 and then GA ed it to universities in November. With INN0V8, we started with the objective of providing an immersive experience that simulates real life, with key 'teaching moments'. It is fundamentally different from traditional e-learning. For me, learning occurs through dialog with other characters - in primarily peer roles, and self-discovery, via trial-and-error, in the mini games contained in the game. Each mini-game is preceded by a tutorial that explains how the game works... just in time!! The experience is risk free.. you can drive the fictional company into the ground without major penalty and so our goal is that we teache real world skills that our customers have told us they value... and are in short demand.. Why don't you try this out and see what you think! Click here to play the INNOV8 preview video.[Read More]

It’s the most wonderful yet hectic time of the year as consumers vie for mall parking spaces and also spend their precious lunch hours shopping online. Meanwhile, vendors are busy carefully managing and monitoring inventory and their supplier relationships to ensure their goods are delivered to stores and homes on time. Of course, an SOA could help these vendors streamline, integrate and manage their various CRM, ERP and SCM applications. Ideally, this integration through the SOA would help ensure that customers are satisfied and retailers have a successful holiday season. For many retailers, however, it’s not an easy task to oversee the manufacturing and timely delivery of goods in a highly competitive, global marketplace – all during a finite period of time. With this in mind, perhaps we could all learn some important lessons about building a service oriented architecture by taking a closer look at one of the first and most successful SOA projects. This project is representative of a Smart SOA strategy, is based in the North Pole and was initiated by Santa Claus to better manage his workshop. Here are 10 reasons why Santa's SOA is exemplary:

1. Global: the infrastructure follows the sun in order to deliver goods to its client base in a timely manner.

2. Cross-company effort: the SOA bridges the gap between the executive office (Santa) and staff (elves) to execute on common goals.

3. BPM support: has built in business process management (BPM) capabilities to streamline and ensure consistency of toy manufacturing and distribution.

4. Flexibility: enables The Workshop to easily anticipate and respond to sudden spikes in end-of-year activity without resulting in any hiccups in workflow.

5. Reusability: the SOA takes advantage of reusable services so that employees can accommodate consistent customer requests (dolls, teddy bears) as well as easily manage and integrate new requests (Wii, DVD player) using the same, proven best practices.

6. Standards-based: enables Santa to protect existing investments such as the home-grown shipping and distribution application while allowing the infrastructure to integrate the latest CRM tools to manage a client base that completely turns over every few years.

7. Unified communications: supports UC by integrating and identifying the individual letters delivered via various communications methods such as email, traditional postal carriers, in person requests delivered to Santa’s helpers in the mall, and inquiries sent via Santa’s website. Additionally, the SOA infrastructure will be able to support future demands for text, instant messaging, and click-to-call capabilities.

8. Security: ensures the protection and sharing of confidential information including the list of who's naughty and who's nice.

9. Competitive advantage: consistent and timely delivery of requested toys has resulted in a satisfied customer base and a dominant market position.

10. Everybody knows that SANTA is an acronym for the North Pole's SOA approach: Strategic Architecture, Not Tactical Achievements. Not only has Santa mastered the creation of a successful SOA, he’s also the ideal employee because he gets the job done, is a well respected leader with longevity and experience, and is satisfied with a cookies and milk end-of-year bonus.

Hey! I am sure you guys read about my world tour of Asia! The most asked question was "Is there a Tutorial available on Smart SOA?". And the answer is of course yes! I'd love for you guys to go through this one and tell me your thoughts. In addition to this tutorial, there is a white paper, and coming "pink papers" that will be arriving as well! Here you go! Have fun! Click here to learn more about SMART SOA.[Read More]